


If Wishing Made It So

by Amand_r



Category: Batman: The Animated Series
Genre: F/M, Gen, Yuletide 2007
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-11-18
Updated: 2010-11-18
Packaged: 2017-10-13 06:34:10
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,548
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/134066
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Amand_r/pseuds/Amand_r
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Selina had given him the gift when they were leaving.</p>
            </blockquote>





	If Wishing Made It So

**Author's Note:**

  * For [LovelyZelda](https://archiveofourown.org/users/LovelyZelda/gifts).



Selina had given him the gift when they were leaving.

They had both been at the Gotham Museum of Natural History -she liked to look at the stuffed cats-when he'd come in. There was supposed to be some sort of heist, but when he'd showed, the truck saw his shadow and continued on its slow curve in the parking lot and back out onto the street. He was rather disappointed; he flexed his hands in their gauntlets.

Dick was away for the holidays, for the first time in a long time, since college even, and Tim was too cynical for the whole 'holiday cheer' thing. Dick had loved Christmas. Not the presents, but the whole carols and snow and Frosty the Snowman deal that seemed to make people tolerate each other a little more this time of year. Alfred was more than happy to indulge him; the house had always been festooned with tinsel and holly in those years, he baked gingerbread cookies that he warmed up when they arrived home from patrols, and plied Bruce with eggnog in that servile but demanding manner of his.

Since Dick wasn't coming home, and Tim had rolled his eyes at the mention of a tree, Bruce had passed on shopping duties to Alfred and left it at that. There were no lights, or holly branches, and certainly no eggnog, which was rather a relief.

So on Christmas Eve he was here in the museum, without Tim, who had at the last minute decided that he liked Christmas and had stayed home to play X-Box a little and hang out on the outer fringes of the kitchen, which smelled suspiciously like gingerbread. Bruce hadn't made a big deal out of Tim's defection; it was Christmas, and no number of eye rolls could counter the seductive aroma of Alfred's baking. He knew that when he got back they'd probably be up to their necks in icing, and Tim would have a monstrous edible construction on the kitchen table that he would name "The Fortress of Deathitude" before devouring it over the next three days.

He made a mental note to schedule some extra workouts for them both in the next few weeks.

He used the same skylight she had, since it was still open, and shook his head to free it of fallen snow, looking around for her. Selina was predictable in this manner. Holly, her sometime ward, was away at college, and Selina was probably left with the company of Isis. Or she could be here to steal something, which would make the entire encounter...uncomfortable.

Bruce didn't like having Selina arrested. She gave him those eyes. Well, the eyes were under the mask, but he could _feel_ her making them.

And she wasn't stealing anything, from the looks of it, because here she was, her hands pressed up against the glass, gazing at the pastoral landscape filled with jaguars.

"Why do you think they decided to put them in a meadow?" Selina said without moving.

He crossed his arms. "Probably because when this was set up a hundred years ago, they weren't sure just what a rainforest looked like."

Selina pressed her forehead against the glass. "The person who _killed_ them had to know." She turned her head slightly, as if she was going to look at him, but clearly she couldn't really see him. Not unless those lenses were a damn sight better than his, and he knew they weren't. She got them from her fence, Murray, from a company Bruce had rejected when ordering his.

He didn't have anything to say to that. She was right. Instead, he decided to tend to business. "You're breaking and entering."

She smiled. "So are you."

"I didn't break. I just entered." And here he reinforced his presence by ignoring her coy look and instead crossing his arms even more than they already were, which was basically just a straightening of his shoulders and raising of his chin until he looked more imposing than he did before. It worked a lot. Most of the time.

But apparently not on Selina. "By that logic, if your house is unlocked, I am allowed to go in." He didn't any anything. "But you came in for me, right?" She held up her hands. "I got nothing. Just me and the kitties."

"The kitties."

She smiled again, then, raising one hand to stroke the glass. "I named them all, you know."

For a moment he was afraid that she was about to wax loquacious about all the names of her dead stuffed cats that didn't really belong to her; he'd always thought that Selina defied the stereotype of what Dick called 'cat people,' but an introduction to her menagerie would probably change his mind. He was starting to regret going in after her, really, mostly because he was also starting to realize that Selina wasn't committing any real crime, and also that he had known that before he'd even gone through the skylight. Which meant that he was here just because she was here.

"You have to leave," he said, trying not to make it sound apologetic. Batman was never apologetic.

She shrugged. "Yeah, Okay, fine."

He followed her up the rope and through the skylight, despite that she could have cut the line and dumped him on the floor anytime. When the skylight was locked again, Selina removed a small box from her waistband pouches.

"I have something for you."

He almost took a step back. Instead, he looked at the tiny, square, foil wrapped box in the flat of her outstretched palm. When she didn't seem to be retracting her hand, he reached out and took it, giving it a tiny shake.

"Merry Christmas. Or Bat-mas, or whatever it is you people celebrate," Selina said with a shrug.

"What is it?" he asked dubiously. This was how he ended up getting in trouble.

She was doing it again; he could feel her raised eyebrow. "You really have a problem understanding the concept of a surprise, don't you?"

And then he watched her jump from the side of the building, land a story below and swandive out into the street before running around heating exhaust.

"I don't like surprises," he said to himself.

***

He had held onto the box in his hand while he drove, shaking it to hear the thunkathunk noise of what lay within. Several of the streets had been so slick that the car had fishtailed a bit. Not enough to see, but enough that he had felt it, and he had been sufficiently pleased and relieved when he had finally seen the entrance to the cave in the suddenly dense weather.

Once free of the winter cape and cowl, he had set about examining the contents of the package, as much as he could. He could open the little box, untie the ribbon and _puff_ deadly gas. Though gas wasn't Selina's style.

To be honest, death wasn't her style either.

Alfred had been there when he arrived, a tray of cookies and eggnog, as if he was still eight and waiting for Santa Claus. Or, rather, he seemed to _be_ Santa Claus in this scenario. And while Bruce was willing to wager that Santa might have a fairly sophisticated method of bending space and time, he probably didn't know the o-nemuri touch.

"Somehow I doubt that Miss Kyle wished to murder you for the holidays," Alfred said dryly, setting a glass of something next to his arm on the lab table. "Really, she's not that gauche."

He sighed and leaned away from the package. So far he'd gone over it with UV and infrared, held it under the microwave scanner and swabbed it for toxins. Nothing. He donned a gas mask, handed one to Alfred, which the butler just held between two fingers with e look of disdain on his face. Mask safely in place, Bruce pulled off the ribbon, unpeeled the tape and finally lifted the lid.

There nestled in a wad of tissue paper, was a small, silver, foil-wrapped lump. It looked vaguely familiar. Bruce tried to remember where he'd seen it before.

Alfred made a small noise as he leaned down to examine Selina's gift. "I do believe she's given you a Hershey's Kiss, Master Bruce," Alfred said lightly, picking up the plate of cookies and setting it on his tray when it became obvious that Bruce wasn't going to eat them.

Bruce sniffed the foil. "Chocolate." Alfred's snort was audible even from the stairs.

"Master Tim, for all of his scoffing at the holidays, circled the tree like a hyena this evening. I suspect that he will be waking us up. Do get some sleep, Master Bruce."

Bruce held the chocolate between two fingers, rolling it back and forth. He finally heard the far echo of the clock sliding back into place upstairs. The Crays beeped a little to signal that it was done compiling the clippings on Selina Kyle's latest misadventures.

He held the chocolate to his nose and wondered about her eyes through the lenses, what they saw when they looked at him.

And then he picked off the foil, and ate his gift; for a second, everything sensory reminded him of the rainforest.

END


End file.
